Power Orientation and Power Distance

Power orientation refers to the beliefs that people in a culture hold about the appropriateness of power and authority differences in hierarchies such as business organizations. 

Some cultures are characterized by power respect. This means that people in a culture tend to accept the power and authority of their superiors simply on the basis of the superiors’ positions in the hierarchy. These same people also tend to respect the superiors’ right to that power. People at all levels in a firm accept the decisions and mandates of those above them because of the implicit belief that higher-level positions carry the right to make decisions and issue mandates. Hofstede found people in France, Spain, Mexico, Japan, Brazil, Indonesia, and Singapore to be relatively power respecting.

Power Distance has been defined as the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations and institutions (like the family) accept and expect that power is distributed unequally. This represents inequality (more versus less), but defined from below, not from above. It suggests that a society's level of inequality is endorsed by the followers as much as by the leaders. Power and inequality, of course, are extremely fundamental facts of any society. All societies are unequal, but some are more unequal than others.

Table 1 Ten Differences between Small- and Large- Power Distance Societies

Small Power Distance	Large Power Distance
Use of power should be legitimate and is subject to criteria of good and evil	Power is a basic fact of society antedating good or evil: its legitimacy is irrelevant
Parents treat children as equals	Parents teach children obedience
Older people are neither respected nor feared	Older people are both respected and feared
Student-centered education	Teacher-centered education
Hierarchy means inequality of roles, established for convenience	Hierarchy means existential inequality
Subordinates expect to be consulted	Subordinates expect to be told what to do
Pluralist governments based on majority vote and changed peacefully	Autocratic governments based on co-optation and changed by revolution
Corruption rare; scandals end political careers	Corruption frequent; scandals are covered up
Income distribution in society very uneven	Income distribution in society rather even
Religions stressing equality of believers	Religions with a hierarchy of priests

The above table lists a selection of differences between national societies that validation research showed to be associated with the Power Distance dimension. For a more complete review the reader is referred to Hofstede (2001) and Hofstede et al. (2010). The statements refer to extremes; actual situations may be found anywhere in between the extremes, and the association of a statement with a dimension is always statistical, never absolute. In Hofstede et al. (2010) Power Distance Index scores are listed for 76 countries; they tend to be higher for East European, Latin, Asian and African countries and lower for Germanic and English-speaking Western countries.

References

Hofstede, G. (2001). Culture's Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions and Organizations across Nations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage (co-published in the PRC as Vol. 10 in the Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press SFLEP Intercultural Communication Reference Series, 2008)

Hofstede, G. (2006). What did GLOBE really measure? Researchers’ minds versus respondents’ minds. Journal of International Business Studies, 37, 882-96.

Hofstede, G. (2010). The GLOBE debate: Back to relevance. Journal of International Business Studies, 41, 1339-46.

Hofstede, G. & Bond, M. H. (1988). The Confucius connection: from cultural roots to economic growth. Organizational Dynamics, 16, 4-21.

Hofstede, G. & Hofstede, G. J. (2005). Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind

(Rev. 2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. For translations see www.geerthofstede.nl and “our books”.

Hofstede, G., Hofstede, G. J. & Minkov, M. (2010). Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind (Rev. 3rd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. For translations see www.geerthofstede.nl and “our books”.